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Lots of word might be used to describe Elon Musk, but whilst he definitely has an air of a Bond supervillain, I can't help but feel his net contribution is a positive one, and certainly, I'd rather the world was more Elon than Bezos. Aside from him as a personality, he's definitely advanced the prospect of increased space exploration in the future. Whether this goal is realistic or not doesn't really matter, because a lot will be learned in trying, even if it doesn't succeed.

Good news. I found the ekos multistar worked well in terms of guiding accuracy, but unfortunately it crashed kstars every few hours so i went back to phd2.

I also use the SVBONY rings and can't recommend them enough, especially given they're less than half the price of other brands. I attached mine to the top of my scope with a spare dovetail and use a SW 9x50 anbd ZWO camera with the commercial adapter. Seems rigid enough. Obviously have no idea how to apportion the guiding error I see, but I'm pretty sure it's not the finderscope flexing!

I'm using the STC filter (https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/stc-astro-duo-narrowband-filter-2.html) but only because it came up 2nd hand cheaper than the a new Optolong extreme (https://www.firstlightoptics.com/narrowband/optolong-dual-band-l-extreme-filter.html). I was about to write something very similar about tri-band and so on, but @Jm1973 beat me to it! The veil seems to be a particularly good target. I've since collected more data on the East and the West and it seems react well to these filters. Nothing else I've imaged so far as as strong an O-III signal. I was also pleased with the Ha response from the elephant trunk nebula, but will admit that star colors can be an issue for other targets. I haven't quite mastered aligning RGB subs, but for example, I want to try combining Ha from the red channel using the dual band with RGB data using a different filter.

I'ma big fan of the dual band filters for a DSLR. They effectively split the Ha signal to the red pixels and the O-III to the G/B pixels. The width of the Ha pass band aside, as far as I can tell, the concept is strictly better than Ha for DSLR's because you don't lose any Ha, and gain O-III for free. Practically, I imagine the Ha band is a lot wider in the dual band filters than a quality Ha filter though. I'm always wary of posting images as I have a lot to learn - but this was less than hour of dual band data with a 450D on a night with 90% moon.

It's really hard to find side by side comparisons, so it's easy to just assume that quality is determined by price. At the slighter cheaper end, I had no issues with https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-filters/zwo-1-25inch-iruv-cut-filter.html I then moved to try a few CLS CCD filters. None have had any issues with bloated stars due to the camera mod. I did find the astronomik Canon clip in CLS CCD produces some reddish halos around very bright stars but I've seen that in other photo's with similar gear.

If you have either of these handsets for your EQ5 then the answer is no.

Take photos of the damage and then check it works. Its really unlikely that the damage to the box you've shown has caused any issues with the product.

I agree with your point if time and equipment/money weren't a consideration, but given that's not true for many people, I think these filters can be useful. The dual band filters effectively separate the Ha and OIII signal completely. The Bayer matrix is there regardless of the filter, so if you're imaging a target that is rich is Ha and OIII anyway, it's a very effective way of increasing SNR. I don't have numeric data to prove it, but anecdotally, I got a significantly better image of the Veil using a dual band filter from Bortle 5 skies compared to no filter. Whether it's worth trying to add SII to create a SHO palette I don't know - but I tend to think of the dual band filter (with a little tweaking of the data) as being a fast way to produce a HOO image. Going back to the original questions, at the very least, it seems sensible to use a CLS style filter with OSC cameras, although I don't know at what point they stop helping. Certainly helps SNR in Bortle 5.

Yeah, this is the behavior I observe too. Last week CO was red whilst I imaging in clear skies. The met office reported clear skies. Anecdotally, CO got a lot worse for me around the time that the Dark Skies app stopped working for me on Android, but I doubt they'd hobble their own API.

It's best to stop thinking of long term weather as something that can be predicted. It's a chaotic system and the best that forecasters can do is suggest the likelihood of various weather in the future. So maybe in 80% of their simulations it's clear, and so the app reports that it'll be clear. If it's cloudy, that doesn't mean they're wrong, it's just means that the less likely reality has come true. Short term forecasts should be a bit easier. I've actually found CO is massively pessimistic, and to be honest, I've assumed it must have a bug or bad data because it differs from other forecasts so dramatically. The met office forecast seems better, although it'd be nice if they split the cloud in to types.

I got a slightly worse for wear/unmodded 550D on eBay for low £80's a few months back. I've generally found the asking price of listings here and on ABS for DSLRs a little optimistic, as you can generally get the bodies on eBay much cheaper.

I already used Google cloud. I've found that it works very well if I mirror a folder on my desktop with the cloud, with syncing being done behind the scenes. Aside from any ethical concerns or technical constraints like slow internet, the cloud seems like an obvious and sensible choice.

Not really adding a lot to this, but I have a couple of similar DSLRs and haven't seen that kind of gradient show up so I doubt it's camera related. But the #1 solution is to take flats. Whilst others will suggest more robust methods, I've found a piece of white paper across an old tablet screen, which us displaying a full screen white jpg, works wonders.

All good questions - afraid a couple of them I had myself! I got in a bit of a mess with 2 wifi adapters but I never worked out all the quirks. Almost certainly not. So unless you need it back, I wouldn't worry about the fact you deleted it. Is it the case that you know the Pi is connected to the hotspot and you just can't VNC to it, or are you unsure whether it's connected to your WiFi hot spot? If it's the WiFi connection, I'd suggest booting it up attached to a monitor to see what it's connecting to. It will remember settings from boot to boot, so if you only have the hotspot setup then it that should be fine. If you have >1 connection configured the behavior appears to be that it sticks with whatever it finds first. This could be the culprit if you've also setup a 2nd WiFi connection on the astroberry and it's connect to that (e.g. your house WiFi is on the edge of range in your garden) - then your tablet is no longer on the same network. If it's VNC then you should able to get there via https://astroberry.local/ in a browser from a device on the same network. Not sure why astroberry has 2 ip addresses - where are you seeing this? You should always be able to SSH in to one of them (e.g. via https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/). You can always just start from a blank image if you're worried that something has been messed up.

I assume you're using a stock Pi without any extra WiFi adapters? You should be able to connect via https://astroberry.local/ from the local network. I ran in to issues because I was trying to use a separate WiFi dongle to get a better range. The best solution I found was to get everything working in the house, and then rebooted a few times to make sure the same behavior happened each time. You can also try booting without the hotspot active to see what happens in that scenario.

I don't use sharpcap with my DSLR, but I'm able to plate solve in different software with exposure times of a couple of seconds. Probably worth checking the ISO setting, or presuming you're using the Nikon ASCOM driver, probably worth checking if there's any advice there. I found BackYardEOS to work well for Canon's but I believe Nikon's are a little more fussy. That said, you can test out the software at any point and make sure you're good to go on the next clear night.

That's correct to a large extent, and you'd achieve similar or better results with your EQ5 and the same DSLR + lens. So perhaps part of the advice was to go wider?! That said, I'm perfectly happy to setup the star adventurer in the dark, whereas due to weight, I always wanted to setup my EQ5 in daylight. The star adventurer is much easier to handle and has the advantage that it's much more portable, if that would increase your option (or maybe not). PA doesn't have to take all night though. If you are imaging and have a camera already, you can get PA with https://www.sharpcap.co.uk/ in 5 minutes. It's the best £10 I've ever spent on this hobby.

I don't have a lot of experience with different cameras, but reached the conclusion that unless you can afford a cooled dedicated camera that a DSLR is better value. I got a second hand modded Canon DSLR for <£150 and it's done well to get me started. I'll probably stick with it until I convince myself that I can spend £800 or so on a cooled OSC dedicated camera. Canon also seems to have good support, but I use astroberry, so not sure about APT. Have you looked at https://github.com/vtorkalo/ASCOM.DSLR ? I've found it hard to get a lot of info on how older vs newer DSLRs perform. It's clear that the newer sensors are better, but I have a suspicion they're not as much better as the multiple in price!

Maybe sell the OTA and EQ5 and get a star adventurer and a decent lens? I had a similar setup to you this summer. Once I got everything setup generally the EQ5 wouldn't guide very well anyway. I've since changed my kit and after a while getting the hang of it, I was able to get setup tonight in about 15 minutes, so it's definitely doable, but takes time. On the flip side, the star adventurer and a decent tripod makes everything pretty easy to get going. Or I also found visual observing was a lot easier to get in to.

Should anyone find there way here with the same issue - I was able to get rid of the noise by adjusting the motor so the gears were further apart. Not sure why it only happened at certain speeds but all fixed now.

I had this setup for a while. Once up and running the guide performance was decent, and I didn't actually see an improvement in guiding performance when I moved to the goto motors. As far as I remember, you're good to go assuming you're also going to include a laptop/PC in the mix running some guidng software like phd2. In phd2 you can setup ST4 guiding on camera (can't remember the exact phrase).

Don't know if I can move a post, but my post in the beginners section Would probably have been better off here - so just cross posting this to see if anyone has heard this noise before and/or understands why I might only get it at certain slew speeds.

I have an EQ6 mount that I got 2nd hand without GOTO, and added the GOTO motors and a new motherboard panel (probably the only black and white mount out there!). I'd resigned myself to having to strip it down and regrease etc when I bought it, but it turned out to guide pretty well, and so I figured I'd leave it for now. Always controlled via EQMOD/INDI until tonight. In a failed attempt to find focus with a new camera/barlow/assortment of extenders and adapters, I was using a handset I bought from another member recently, and found the mount is making a rather unpleasant grinding noise at intermediate speeds, on the DEC axis only, when used with the handset. It's not there at slow speeds or at full speed. Realise it's hard to hear on a video but wondering if anyone had heard a similar noise and diagnosed it? It sounds a bit like gears grinding, but then it's only happening at a certain intermediate speed, so wonder if something is loose and this is resonance? I'll pop the panel off and have a look anyway at the weekend, check grease etc, but from memory when I installed the motors, there wasn't a great deal of play available in the motor positions. For the video, the first short move is in RA. I then tried a few times to modulate the DEC movement to maximize the noise. PXL_20201028_194228433.mp4

I've not tried this target, but I've noticed a massive improvement when moving from no filter to a CLS filter (and for nebulae, a dual band filter). I presume it's improving the SNR by removing some of the glow from the city lights.